Julie Mennella, co-winner (with Gary Beauchamp) of the 2025 Ig Nobel Prize for Pediatrics, was interviewed by Kayla Yup of the Philadelphia Inquirer. The headline says: “The Philadelphia scientists who studied garlic-flavored breast milk won a 2025 Ig Nobel Prize — Mennella was one of two scientists at Monell Chemical Senses Center to win a 2025 Ig Nobel Prize, the satirical counterpart to the Nobel Prize.”
The interview includes this tasty tidbit:
QUESTION: What is your favorite project that you have worked on since the garlic study?
MENNELLA: I serendipitously found that another flavor that gets transmitted is alcohol, and that became a whole new area of research. We found that when women just have the equivalent of one or two glasses of wine or beer, not only did the alcohol get transmitted, but it flavored the milk. That became a lead article in the New England Journal of Medicine. At that time, there was talk about a folklore that women should drink when they’re breastfeeding, so they would make more milk. And contrary to that folklore, they actually made less milk.